1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to wireless communications and more specifically relates to establishing push-to-talk communication between wireless communication devices.
2. Related Art
Conventional systems and methods for establishing a push-to-talk (“PTT”) call over a wireless communication network suffer from significant call setup times. Typically, a call message from a requesting handset is received by a PTT server that subsequently sends out an announce message to the target handset. In order to send the announce message to the target handset, however, the target handset must first be located. Accordingly, conventional systems first broadcast a page message over a predefined geographical region in order to precisely locate the target handset.
Once the handset has responded to the page message, and thereby identified its location in a particular cell of the wireless communication network, the announce message is sent to the target handset via the specific base station for the particular cell. A significant drawback of these conventional methods for establishing a PTT call is the amount of time required to locate the target handset. Although periodic registration of handsets in a wireless communication network is generally required, the time lapse between registration messages can vary between a few minutes and several hours. Consequently, the location of a target handset can require multiple page messages to be sent over a wide geographic area if the handset has not recently registered with the network and has moved. These multiple page messages increase the PTT call setup time.
Additionally, once the target handset has been located and received and responded to the announce message, the PTT server sends a connection status message back to the requesting handset. However, the connection status message is delayed at the base station until the wireless communication network has established a traffic channel for the PTT call. Once the traffic channel is established, then the connection status message is sent to the requesting handset over the traffic channel. This delay in delivering the connection status message significantly increases the PTT call setup time.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method that quickly and efficiently establishes push-to-talk communications between wireless communication devices and overcomes the time consuming procedures found in the conventional systems as described above.